Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old U.S.-born gunman behind America’s worse mass shooting attack in history that took place this morning [Sunday, June 12] at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida apparently had a a violent history of beating his ex-wife, among other details currently emerging.
Mateen’s ex-wife has come forward with the striking confession of being consistently beaten by Mateen during their marriage. She described their marriage as “normal” when she moved to Florida to live with Mateen and she says she hadn’t noticed anything strange about him. “He seemed like a normal human being” she says. During their marriage, his ex-wife says he wasn’t extremely into religion and he owned a handgun, but showed no signs of being part of the radical group ISIS, which is now being claimed.
As their marriage moved along, the dynamic of their relationship reportedly changed. Mateen’s ex-wife described a change in him as a person. “He was not a stable person,” she says. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
After her parents learned of the abuse they flew to her house and saved her, and she left her whole life behind. The Washington Post writes, “Her parents flew to Fort Pierce and pulled her out of the house, leaving all her belongings behind. The ex-wife said she never had contact with Mateen again…” Their marriage only lasted a few months and they officially divorced in 2011. “They literally saved my life,” she says of her parents.
An alleged friend of Mateen’s, who also chose to remain anonymous, recalls Mateen soon became very religious and traveled to Saudi Arabia several years ago for the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the “Umrah.” Mateen’s friend was also unaware of his relationship to ISIS. “The friend said that if Mateen had sympathies for the Islamic State or other terrorist groups, he kept that to himself.”
